Publius Pundit's Robert Mayer has an excellent post exposing Russia's naked energy imperialism in the wake of the Belarus attack and calling for unified NATO-based action in Europe to oppose further encroachments on European security by neo-Soviet Russia. Feel free to leave your comments on how we can best respond to Russian energy aggression. German Chancellor Merkel has already declared that Russia's actions are severely undermining its credibility in Europe.

Let's not forget, too, that not only is Russia interested in imperialsm but also in simply driving up and maintaining the price of crude oil, vital to maintaining Russia's limited influence in the world. Until the Belarus brouhaha, the price had been seriously eroding and Russia's stock market had been seriously tanking, meaning that Russia had a direct interest in making the markets nervous (this explains why it provides so much support to the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah).